653 Chenery Street
in San Francisco's Glen Park neighborhood
1-415-586-3733
[email protected]
Open to walk-in trade and browsing
Tuesday to Sunday
noon to six
Live Streams every weekend!
Refresh your browser to catch a show in progress!
Visit our Facebook page or YouTube channel!
But nothing beats being in the room with the music & the musicians!
$10 suggested donation $5 suggested for students/musicians/low income Supercalifornographic singer-songslinger Maurice Tani pulls all the angst of life right to the surface of his songs. His redemption songs and his wry commentary on life in the sidestreets and cheap rooms of the American dream are never really overstated. Bassist Mike Anderson, with his years of experience with Maurice, is a resonant foil for the stories that unfold. San Francisco-born and bred, Maurice developed an ear for the Bakersfield sound of Buck Owens, Merle Haggard and such early on. In his 20s, he left for central Texas to work the country, blues and rock circuit from Austin to Dallas, playing five sets a night, seven nights a week for months at a time, and eventually making his way to New York City as the punk rock scene of CBGBs and Max’s Kansas City was exploding. By 1977, he was back in San Francisco,…
Read More$20 cover charge; $10 for students / musicians / low income. Â B3B4 is a long-awaited musical conversation between Bay Area jazz veterans Tom Griesser (tenor sax), Scott Foster (guitar), Kevin Gerzevits (organ) and Dan Foltz (drums). The band combines the soulful growl of the Hammond B3 organ, the resonant bite of the tenor saxophone, the bluesy fluidity of the electric guitar and the propulsive groove of the drums. B3B4 is heavily steeped in blues and bop, featuring a repertoire including works by Jimmy Smith, Billy Strayhorn, Neal Hefti and Miles Davis, in addition to their own compositions. Their performances range from mid-tempo blues to warm, intricate ballads to driving up-tempo barnburners, and they reveal the fluency and experience of the group’s members in a wide range of genres.
Read More$20 cover charge. $10 for students/musicians/fixed income. Erik Jekabson, trumpet. Matt Renzi, reeds. Dave Mac Nab, guitar. Peter Barshay, bass. Hamir Atwal, drums. Towering talents of San Francisco jazz!
Read More$10-20 suggested donation. $5 suggested for students/musicians/fixed income. Jules Broussard, saxophone Grant Levin, piano Chris Amberger, bass Louis Sweatt, drums Derek Evans, vocals Jules Broussard. born in Louisiana, was organizing bands and playing lead saxophone for audiences in and around his hometown by the age of 12. After a stint in the US Air Force and then traveling throughout the US, Europe and Asia, Jules arrived in San Francisco in 1960, taking jobs at Bop City and Jack’s, playing ’til 1 a.m. and on weekends ’til 6 in the morning. In 1966 he went with Ray Charles’ band for a six-month run, and his seven-year tenure leading the house band at Mill Valley’s Sweetwater from that club’s founding in 1972 is legendary. Along the way, he worked with Carlos Santana, Boz Scaggs, Van Morrison, Earl Grant, Elvin Bishop, Art Garfunkel and Doctor Hook. He’s been a Bay Area favorite for nearly sixty years.…
Read More$15 cover; $5 for students, musicians, limited income.
Read More$10-20 suggested donation; $5 for students/musicians/low income. 1947: When bebop was hitting its peak and American jazz was newly energized! Bird, Diz, Monk, Bud, Max, Kenny… Guitarist Scott Foster leads a superb quartet through the paces, tracing 1947 as it unfurled before a few galvanized souls in a nation narcoticized by a consumerist fog that blanketed the land.  In other words, a time much like our own! But with amazing music! Joining Scott are Danny Brown on tenor sax; Eric Markowitz on bass; and Vince Lateano on drums. Special guest Terry Tarnoff, North Beach novelist, joins the band towards the end of the first set to read passages from his novel The Chronicle of Stolen Dreams – a road novel and bildungsroman unfurling as Chicago blues, bebop and alien encounters shape the emerging mid-century modern America. David Amram, long-time collaborator with Jack Kerouac, says, “Terry Tarnoff is a writer whose every word,…
Read MoreNo charge. Jennifer Elise Foerster is the author of Leaving Tulsa, (2013) and Bright Raft in the Afterweather (2018), both published by the University of Arizona Press. She earned her PhD in English and Literary Arts from the University of Denver and her MFA from the Vermont College of the Fine Arts. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Writing Residency Fellowship, and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University. Jennifer teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts MFA Low-Residency Program and co-directs For Girls Becoming, an arts mentorship program for Mvskoke youth in Oklahoma. Of Jen’s latest book of poetry, “Bright Raft in the Afterweather,” Joy Harjo says, “We are adrift in mythic waters that hold the possibility of rebirth even as they float the remains of human destruction. We could be in San Francisco, within the…
Read More$10-20 suggested donation. $5 for students/musicians/fixed income. Derek Evans on vocals. Todd Swenson on guitar. Marc Levine on bass. Ken Owen on drums. Soulville
Read More$20 cover charge. $10 for students/musicians/fixed income. The steaming Mediterranean meets cool California, wrapped in the elegant saxophone of Noel Jewkes. Vocalists Kay Kostopoulos, Dima, Wanda Stafford and Valeriana Quevedo, fondly dubbed the “Salt ‘n Peppa Gals” and well known to audiences at Noel’s weekly showcase at Sausalito’s Seahorse Restaurant, take their turns at the mic through the course of two sets of exquisite jazz! Keith Saunders (piano), Chris Amberger (bass) and Mark Lee (drums) add their considerable talents to keep it swingin’!
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Friday, August 3rd – 9-11 pm – The Late Show!
Scott Foster Organ Trio featuring Lorenzo FarrellÂ
$15 cover charge. $5 for students/musicians/fixed income. Scott Foster, guitar. Lorenzo Farrell, organ. Bob Scott, drums. Three great musicians navigating the classic organ trio sounds of Jimmy Smith, Larry Young and other masters of the 1950s and ’60s.
Read MoreExquisite music is being played live at Bird & Beckett 27 times this month in Glen Park. And there’s poetry too. Monday, for instance. What are you waiting for?? Love ya! Get down here! (oh, and jazz club! on Saturday night? That’s actually 7:30 to 10 pm. Don’t be a dope! Get hip! Membership open to all & sundry! All ya gotta do is come down!)
Read More$20 cover charge; $10 for students/musicians/low income. The Lost Trio — Phillip Greenlief, saxophone; Dan Seamans, bass; Tom Hassett, drums — has a continuous 25-year history of close collaboration in creative music, “redefining the jazz standard” by way of excursions through tunes by Hank Williams and Herbie Nichols, Billy Strayhorn and Nino Rota, Irving Berlin and Joni Mitchell, Monk, Beck and Bjork. With a repertoire of 600 pieces, including originals by all three members, The Lost Trio finds itself intrigued and engaged exploring any terrain you can imagine. For their engagement tonight at Bird & Beckett, The Lost Trio has invited the saxophonist and composer Beth Schenck to join them. Since arriving in the Bay Area a few years ago, Beth has been heard doing beautiful work with a host of the Bay Area’s most adventurous musicians, in aggregations that include the Guthrie Project, House of Faern, the Social Stutter Saxophone…
Read More$10-20 suggested donation. $5 suggested for students/musicians/fixed income. John Calloway returns to Bird & Beckett with his quartet (David Flores – drums and percussion;Â Alex Farrell – acoustic bass;Â Jordan Samuels – guitar), featuring vocalist Angie Doctor. From Flute Bay Area (www.flutebayarea.com): “Virtuoso jazz flutist John Calloway has earned stature among the elites of Latin jazz and Afro-Cuban music, through three decades of distinguished contributions as a multi-instrumentalist, improviser, composer, arranger, and educator. Born in San Francisco in 1959, John Calloway began performing in the city’s Mission District as a teenager. In the 1970’s, Latin Beat Magazine says, “Calloway’s flute helped to spark a Caribbean musical renaissance, as part of the neo-traditionalist band Tipica Cienfuegos” with John Santos, Greg Landau, and Anthony Blea. In the early 1980’s, Calloway moved to New York, where he performed with Manny Oquendo & Libre, Charanga 76, Oscar Hernandez, Jimmy Bosch and others, while working toward a…
Read MoreJoin us for a celebration of Lori’s new cd, “A Dream or Two” Lori Carsillo, vocals Jeffrey Burr, guitar Eric Markowitz, bass Vince Lateano, drums “A Dream or Two” features six stunning jazz gems and an original song co-written with the guitarist and arranger on the session, Jeffrey Burr. Eric Markowitz, the bassist on the cd session, joins Lori and Jeff for this late night Bird & Beckett date, along with jazz veteran Vince Lateano, handling the situation for session drummer James Gallagher, newly departed for New York. Beautiful music is about to be heard from this sterling combo and supremely talented vocalist! Lori has been praised as a singer with “superb phrasing, an impressive range†(Christopher Loudon, JazzTimes), and Scott Yanow, jazz historian and author, has observed that “Lori floats above ensembles, digs deep into the words that she interprets, and usually has a smile in her voice. The…
Read More$10-20 suggested donation. $5 suggested for students/musicians/fixed income. Drew Cranfill, violin, with pianist Manu Petaiua, will perform Bach Violin Partita No. 2 in D Minor Mozart Violin Sonata in B-flat MajorBeethoven Violin Sonata No. 8 Opus 30Phillip Glass Violin Sonata Drew Cranfill, a native of North Carolina, was educated by the Alexander String Quartet at San Francisco State University, achieving a Masters in solo violin performance. Drew lives in Glen Park with his wife and two children. Manu Petaiua, San Francisco native son, is currently pursuing his Masters in classical piano performance in Southern California. Cranfill and Petaiua have six years’ experience in collaboration.
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SUPPORT BIRD & BECKETT - DONATE TODAY!
Your donation to the Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project helps us pay for a multitude of operating expenses necessary to present, promote and preserve local music, poetry, and more.
Help us keep the arts alive and thriving!
The Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project was created in 2007 "to present, document and archive the creative work of significant living writers and musicians in the San Francisco Bay Area, for a neighborhood audience and future generations." We've been doing that very thing for more than a decade and a half, continuing the work we began when the store was established in 1999.
Due to lapses in tax filings during and post-pandemic, the BBCLP's status as a registered nonprofit was suspended at the beginning of April 2024 while we reapply, which is expected to take about six months. Donations made after April 1st will not be tax-deductible until nonprofit status is restored.
However, we continue to present a full slate of programming live music and poetry, and producing literary chapbooks, and we seek and welcome your continued financial support in the interim. If a tax-deduction is not a major reason for your support to date, we hope you'll continue to ride with us while we navigate these next several months.
Click on "donate" in the navigation bar above, drop off a check at the bookshop, or drop one in the mail to:
Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project
653 Chenery Street
San Francisco, CA 94131
Call us at (415) 586-3733 to find out how else you might lend your support.
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The Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project
Our events are put on under the umbrella of the Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project (the "BBCLP"). That's how we fund our ambitious schedule of 300 or so concerts and literary events every year.
The BBCLP is a [Read More ]
The Independent Musicians Alliance
Gigging musicians! You have nothing to lose but your lack of a collective voice to achieve fair wages for your work!
The IMA can be a conduit for you, if you join in to make it work.
https://www.independentmusiciansalliance.org/
Read more here - Andy Gilbert's Feb 25 article about the IMA from KQED's site
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